Lecture

Dialectics as a Method, Not Ontology, As Applied by Karl Marx

mit Katarina Kolozova

15.12.2026|18h

In Intellectual and Manual Labour (1970), Sohn-Rethel argues that Kant’s transcendental subject formally resembles exchange abstraction. Because Kant defines the subject as time, capitalism operates on a Kantian subject driven by pure temporality; wage workers rent out labour time in exchange for abstract value expressed through monetary price. True, capital is the product of pure abstraction – surplus value, and the latter grows exponentially with the elimination of any materiality, certainly commodity, including wage labour as commodity. M-C-M turns into M-M’, Marx said it himself (he needs no corrections here by the “post-Marxists”). However, this creates a contradiction that cannot be “sublated” as this is the question of real vs. (human) transcendental – the final contradiction.

Lecture

Time, Subject and Capital

mit Carl Olsson

05.01.2027|18h

Discussing Kant in an era of attempted criticisms of capital/ism is pressing, be it a discussion in terms of Marxian critique and communist commitment or one in defense of capital. Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” of de-ontologizing time—i.e., rendering it “the stuff” subjectivity is made of—corresponds with capitalism’s subjectivity-centered reasoning and Time as a measure of value. Pricing waged and unwaged labor dictates surplus or, ideally, just pure value (M-M’ instead of M-C-M). At a time when AI development is driven precisely by the idea of removing the cost of human labor, we are being convinced that labor and wages are irrelevant to contemporary value theory. Yet again, removing these costs seems to be an immense incentive, and it only makes sense because, over the past year, labor time has been increasing on a global scale, not the other way around. Kojin Karatani recognizes the method of critique (inherited from Kant) in the execution of Marx’s analysis of capital, whereas we are focusing on the centrality of time as the “stuff” capitalism is made of (just like the Kantian subject). On the occasion of this public lecture at SMR ICP Fall 2026-27, we are inviting Carl Olsson to contribute to our curriculum with a short presentation of his latest publication with Becoming Press, The Mouth That Eats Itself: Geography & the Problem of Space (2026).

Lesung

Werkstadt

mit Autor Felix Geiser

04.02.2027|19h

Das VW-Werk Wolfsburg, Deutschlands größter Industriekomplex, liegt nach der Insolvenz des Konzerns plötzlich brach. Das Gelände droht zu verfallen und wird nach und nach besetzt, bewohnt, gestaltet – von Künstlern, obdachlosen Menschen, Ravern, ehemaligen Angestellten, Familien und Freaks. Der so entstehende Ort ist für manche existenzielle Notwendigkeit, für andere Experimentierfeld oder ein letzter idealistischer Versuch.

Der Autor Felix Geiser, der mit ›Werkstadt‹ seinen Debütroman vorlegt, ergründet dieses Soziotop multiperspektivisch. Die Protagonisten Lena, Henry, Dina und Walter, deren Lebensumstände und Vorstellungen sich stark voneinander unterscheiden, verhandeln elementare Fragen des sozialen Miteinanders in einer neoliberalen Welt der Vereinzelung. Die ›Werkstadt‹ wird zum Text und Ort einer Utopie, die sich keine nahe oder ferne Zukunft imaginiert, sondern das Undenkbare hier und heute zu vergegenwärtigen versucht und damit auch Fragen nach dem utopischen Schreiben selbst aufwirft.